


swing low, sweet chariot

by jonphaedrus



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: AFAB Regis, Assisted Suicide, Canon Disabled Character, Chronic Illness, Established Relationship, Goodbye Sex, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Pre-Suicide Mission, pre-game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-15 22:39:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9261125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: Niflheim never gave Lucis terms of peace. Niflheim gave them an honourable suicide, and Regis has taken it without hesitation, stronger than steel or iron, braver than any other man Clarus has ever known.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from [swing low, sweet chariot](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUvBGZnL9rE) but the fic OST, if you really hate yourself, is [dewdrops at dawn](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZoobsWC3mM)
> 
> in case the tags didn't warn you, this is a really trigger-heavy fic, and deals a lot with chronic pain and illness and disabilities, and the decision about when enough is enough, and death is a better recourse than living. so i'm working through some serious personal baggage of my own here.
> 
> if you havent had a chance to read the prologue novel [parting ways](http://cdn.sqexeu.com/files/ff15/main_site/public/novella/FFXV_Novel_ENG.pdf) yet, you should. it's absolutely heartbreaking, seeing what regis and clarus willingly, knowingly did to save lucis. to save noctis. to save the world.

When Clarus finally puts down his pen and goes to bed, the bedroom lights are out, the curtains closed. It’s quiet. He doesn’t bother to brush his teeth; there’s no point. He changes for bed in the darkness and silence, and thinks the whole time that perhaps this has all been for naught. That his last letters will be delivered to no-one at all, and his dying thoughts and dreams and wishes will go with him. That their gambit will fail, choked in their throats, with their last breaths. There is a very real chance that Cor will not come back to the citadel, and a very real chance nobody will think to look on Regis’ desk, that Iris might not get taken out of the city, that—

But he has at least written them.

They aren’t leaving wills. There is no point. If they die on the morrow, nobody in Lucis will be left who will be able to see that their possessions are divided up between their children, that Gladiolus gets Clarus’ family heirloom watch, that Noctis receive his father’s diaries.

But the letters are there.

Perhaps, someday, someone will find them, and deliver them to their rightful recipients.

Clarus climbs in bed, and in the dark and silence, reaches out across the mattress. Regis’ hand finds his, and they hold hands tight in the yawning darkness of their bedroom, neither of them speaking for a long time. “I thought you had gone to sleep,” Clarus admits at last, not above a whisper, and Regis makes a quiet noise in answer.

“Tried. Can’t.” Clarus nods, although Regis can’t see him. Just holds his hand tighter. Regis had been nearly asleep on his feat after the fête, and Clarus had long expected him to be dozing. “It feels wrong,” Regis sighed at last, rolling over on the bed, curling around Clarus’ side, forehead pressed to his shoulder. “To be sleeping, knowing what’s to come on the morrow.” Clarus doesn’t say what he’s thinking—that it _is_ the morrow, that soon Cor will be rising to go out on his last patrol as Marshal of the Crownsguard, that below they are preparing the Citadel for its last state function, that they will have to rise sooner rather than later when dawn breaks, and face the music with their heads held high, as if they didn’t know the finale was playing.

Clarus curls around Regis, free hand sliding up his narrow back under his shirt, the King’s face buried in his shoulder, Clarus’ breath hot on the hollow of his throat.

“We did the best we could,” he says at last, like that absolves them of everything. They’re going to die in the morning. He knows this. Honesty is about all they have left to them. They can’t cheat death, not here, not now. They can only do it with clean consciences. “We could still run away.”

Regis laughs, shifts closer.

“No point,” he mutters, beard scraping softly over the skin of Clarus’ shoulder. “What would we do, go to ground? Hide? They’d still take Insomnia, and I’ll be damned if I don’t take as many of them with us as we can.” His fingers clench against Clarus’. “I won’t leave Noctis to mop up our mess, Clarus.” No. They won’t do that. Noctis already has so much on his shoulders; so much more than he could imagine. So much more than they ever told him.

Clarus knows, that Noctis is not ready. He knows that they did not do their best with their boys. He knows that the coming months, and years, are going to be hard. Adulthood is never easy; there are always lies you are never prepared for, secrets that come up just when you thought you had moved on. Six know their children will face more of that than any mortal should. Regis and Clarus had worn themselves ragged, trying to protect them. And in the morning—

“Stars, Clarus,” Regis whispers, his deep voice shaking with exhaustion and emotion and sorrow, true and cut to the heart of him. “Will they ever forgive us? Will _anyone_ ever forgive us?” For selling Insomnia, for the deaths of the citizens who will no doubt accompany them into the afterlife like some sick sacrifice, for the years they have spent buying time in blood money. For their own deaths now, so close. Too close.

“It matters not,” Clarus admits, tracing the knobs of Regis’ misaligned spine. There is a pain that won’t bother him any longer soon. He should be able to find some solace in that, some sort of relief, but all he feels is this awful yawning anguish that it had to happen in the first place at all. That Regis has lost the better part of his life to pain and night-sweats and crippling magic, that every time the Kingsglaive makes use of his gifted magic they are robbing him of another day to draw breath. At least with this, he won’t have to live out his twilight years, slipping further and further away, until one day he is but a ghost in his own skin, like his father was. At least like this—

“We shan’t be here to suffer the slings and arrows if they don’t.”

 

 

(It had been getting worse for the past year. Regis slept less and less every night, and had weathered three illnesses in the months leading up to this fools gold-cloaked ceasefire, each of which left him sweating off fat in fever he couldn’t stand to lose, left his clothes hanging ever-looser on his narrow frame. His hands shook constantly now, and he could barely stand without his cane, walked only through pure force of will and bloodless-lipped fury. He had fainted, twice, and only Clarus catching him had been the space between Regis and an accident the kind from which you did not recover.

He knows death should be a gift here. He knows this, because twenty-three years before, he stood guard at the bedroom door as Regis did for his father as his father had done for his father before, and went in, and slowly, gently, with tears on his cheeks and regret heavy on his tongue in unspoken apologies, smothered him in his sleep. The magic was a curse, not a blessing, one that robbed good men and women from the world before their time was up. One that would take Regis from him, sooner, every day now.

They are not facing something new.

They are facing something they have faced every day before.

But now, there is a date, and a time, and a place, and it is a strong man indeed who can go face-first to his own destruction without an unspoken whisper of hope, without a single, _what if_.)

 

 

Neither of them cry.

It would be a waste of time and energy; it would leave them both overwrought. There’s no point to it. The orders are signed and sealed. The axe is hung above their heads, and what little time they have left is theirs to use as they wish. Theirs to use, if they want, to make peace.

Instead, Regis pushes Clarus onto his back, straddles his waist. In the darkness, all Clarus can see is the light through the curtains that glints off of Regis’ grey-green eyes, the silhouette of his body. The other man doesn’t need to say it for Clarus to know this is _one last time_ , because they’re going hand in hand to whatever awaits them when the sun rises, and they’re going to do it with regrets but—not this regret. Not this regret, as Clarus strips Regis of his shirt, fingers trailing the scars at the bottom of his pectorals, the hair that dusts his sternum. He can still remember when Regis was just first growing his chest hair, how awkward it looked on a man of twenty.

He looks so much better now, comfortable in his own too-thin skin, owning who and what he is. Regis was meant to be a King, and he wears it as easily as he does the scars that crown him beside his right eye. Clarus lets him get his trousers off, pull down his own sweatpants, and wraps his grateful hands around Regis’ narrow hips, feels the flex and work of muscle as Regis slides up over him, breath heavy and wet in his throat.

He’s hot, at the core of him, but not yet wet between his folds, just warm and waiting and wanting and pressed to Clarus’ length, barely half-hard. He can remember the days in their twenties when Regis, his body going a mile a minute between two conflicting sets of hormones, would practically crawl hot and begging and naked in nothing but his skin and sweat into Clarus’ sleeping bag, and Clarus could get hard twice in an hour. It’s different now, Regis grinding on him until Clarus is finally aching, leaning up on his elbows to kiss the other man, and Regis bends down to him like a benediction, a prayer and a blessing, slender fingers cool on the back of his neck. Kissing the King is salvation, is light and hope and longing, and Clarus arches up into him, cock pressing hard to his clit, frottage more than enough and yet somehow not enough, tugs him down.

“I love you,” Clarus whispers, into Regis’ open mouth, teeth scraping his lower lip, hands sliding up to spread broad-fingered across his narrow waist, thumbs brushing through his pubic hair. “I love you,” as Regis grinds their hips together and it’s messy, Clarus is leaking onto his stomach, and he wants desperately not to be _inside_ Regis but to be _within_ him, to be one, one being, one person, just to shed it all outside so that in the morning when dawn comes they don’t have to face it alone or apart, so that they can go hand-in-hand into the coming darkness. “I love you—“ He feels dragged to threads and tatters already, coming apart at old seams never well sewn shut, Regis tearing him out of his gravity and into his hold as he always has, always had, always will.

Regis comes shuddering apart above him, kissing Clarus until he can’t breathe, until Clarus presses his face into Regis’ shoulder, comes rocking up against him, onto his own stomach, fingers digging into the sharp curves of the King’s ass, not wanting to let him go, not now.

They have said their goodbyes, Clarus realises, to everyone but each other.

As if they are pretending that it isn’t farewell, and that they will go to bed tomorrow night just as they have tonight, that their children will come home for dinner and laugh about their days. As if the world as they know it isn’t crumbling apart like sand castles between their toes, washed away by the Caem surf, ripped off of the rocks.

 

 

At the fête, Regis had barely been on his feet. Days and days of meetings back to back had left him vertiginous and worn, and Clarus had never been further than arm’s reach the whole time. If the Niflheim officials had not been in attendance, he would not have come. Or, at the very least, he would have stayed seated, stopped pushing his failing body. Clarus had known that there was a very real possibility that the King might faint again, and had not wanted that to happen. It would do more than lose face—it would reveal that the hand they had stacked against themselves was far less dangerous than their opponents thought. If Aldercapt had known that the King was in a very real way _dying_ as he intentionally put himself into check and mate, it would never work. Niflheim had to think that Regis had something to lose.

( _Later_ , Noctis and Gladiolus will think why their parents didn’t suspect more from the silver-tongued Chancellor. _Later,_ they will wonder why Regis and Clarus saw only the axe above their heads and not the snake in the grass, rearing back to bite at their heels with fangs drawn. _Later_ , Noctis will think that perhaps his father played his hand not nearly as well as he had thought, that Ardyn had escaped through their fingers. _Later_ , he will wonder how anyone had ever looked at Ardyn Izunia and not thought _that man is the most dangerous thing in this room_.

But _later_ is not now and _later_ does not come until after Noctis and Gladiolus make the same mistakes, the same incorrect assumptions, fall for the same grandiose lies.)

“Insomnia is beautiful.” Chancellor Izunia had not spoken it directly to the King, but more to the air, giving him an out if he so chose. “Especially at night.” When Regis had not responded, Ardyn had carefully doffed his hat and held it to his chest.

His champagne flute, Clarus noticed, had not been actually drunk from. It was as full as it had been all night.

“I thank you,” Regis managed at last, his iron control never wavering, even as he reached out his free hand for Clarus to balance him out, leaning too-heavily onto his cane. “Your Emperor said much the same.”

“Iedolas is as awed as any would be by Insomnia.” The Chancellor turned, looking down over the balustrade at the city far below them. “It is a modern marvel; ‘twas apt I called it the Jewel in the Lucian Crown.” He paused, and then turned one eye toward Regis. “Although you wear one not.” Regis did; it was a thin silver circlet tucked into his hair, but it was not the crown. The crown was the hairline scars on his cheek and forehead, that in the right light glowed. The physical silver circlet was only an accessory, meant to mark the King in an age that longed for the tangible.

“It has changed much since I was last here,” the Chancellor settled on at last, and Regis startled slightly. “Truthfully, I could not tell you if it is more beautiful as it is now than it was then, but it is far more awe-inspiring than anything that rests in my memories.”

“I did not know you had ever visited before.”

“Oh, it was before your time by a stretch. When I was young.” Chancellor Izunia did not look a day over forty-five, but he spoke the words with such a longing, a nostalgia that ran bone-deep and acid-hot, like the acrid stench of an overheating car engine. “You’ve done well with it.”

“Thank you?” Regis sounded as absolutely baffled as Clarus felt, and the Chancellor turned to them, sketched a quick bow, placed his hat once more upon his head. Clarus knew how to read faces, how to see in a single expression perceived danger. Ardyn Izunia had a smile that Clarus had never seen on another person. It reached his eyes _too much,_ almost, like he was laughing at some secret joke he had decided not to let the rest of the world in on. That, perhaps, nobody else would truly get.

“I regret to leave you so soon,” Regis had hesitated as he continued, “But I must retire early.”

“Oh, I must be on my way as well, unfortunately.” He had waved a hand. “Things to do, you know. Enjoy your evening, Your Majesty.”

It had only been as they had begun to walk away, Clarus slowing his steps for Regis to keep up, that the man had spoken up again. “For what it’s worth,” Izunia said, his voice too-light, that brutal brilliant sorrow back again, “I am truly sorry.”

Regis had turned, his hackles raised, to snarl, “For _what_?” But they had found facing them just a man, dressed in outlandish, ridiculous clothes, with a look that felt as raw as did Clarus’ own heart, knowing what he had signed up to do for all of them.

“For what is to come.”

 

 

It is the fate of the Amicitia to die for their king. Clarus’ own father had died in the early days of the last war, a casualty outside the city, running messages for Mors, shot through the chest and left to bleed out in a ditch. Clarus had known from the time he was old enough to understand (from the time he was five and saw for the first time this newborn thing, soft and unprotected and barely aware was _his_ to guard, _his_ to keep safe, and had pledged himself to the care of it) that he will die before Regis. He has always known that. He still knows it now.

He knows, too, that when the dawn comes, and they put on their clothes and their faces, that he will find a way to do it now. If he can win even but five minutes for his King, he will do it without hesitation. If it was even but five seconds, Clarus will not see Regis die before his eyes. He shall not fail at this, the one thing he has left to him.

As they lay, tangled and sweaty, Clarus for the first time realises how old he feels. His hips and neck ache, and Regis, sprawled boneless on top of his chest, is narrow-hipped and worryingly light. And it is, like this, that he makes his peace with it.

Niflheim never gave Lucis terms of peace. Niflheim gave them an honourable suicide, and Regis has taken it without hesitation, stronger than steel or iron, braver than any other man Clarus has ever known. He will use it as a double-edged sword, as much a weapon against them as against himself, and win time with it. Blood to slow the sands, blood to give Noctis perhaps just _one more day_. Is that not what parents are supposed to do, though? They will go on into the dark together, and pray that their children will be able to make something worthwhile of the world they have left behind.

Clarus does not sleep.

Neither does Regis.

They lay tangled, naked, holding one another and thinking of nothing at all, or of too many things at once, for the rest of that long, dark night. They breathe in each others’ skin, and come to terms with it. They shall meet death hand in hand, as an old friend, as they have gone about everything else in their lives. They will push on as long as they can, and climb as many obstacles as they are able to, and when they lay down their weary arms to rest, they will do it smiling.

“It has not been all bad,” Clarus murmurs, as the first golden rays of the sun crest the horizon, stained blue and pale by the Wall, scattering through their bedroom like they are refracted a hundred thousand times. “Thirty-five years together. We had twenty years with him. It is more than some, and less than others.”

“I hate to leave a thing undone,” Regies replies, but Clarus knows that what he wants to say is, _It is better than we could hope for_.

Regis sits up at last, their knees tangled together, and in the dawn light his hair glows, scattered across his face, his eyes are so green Clarus could fall into them and never come out.

“I love you,” Regis says simply. He does not cry.

 

 

( _Is it really worth it_? Clarus had asked, the night they had received the treaty offer. _Can we truly do this_?

 _We don’t have a choice._ Regis had not looked at him as he spoke, staring out over the city from the Citadel roof balcony, his steely hair like silver dusting the shoulders of his shirt without his coat. He was tense. _We’re losing this war, Clarus. We either lose it now, on our own terms, and play a winning hand to take them with us, or we lose later, however they want_.

 _We could buy a few more years, surely_. Even saying it he knew what a foolish hope it was. Knew that a few more years would leave Regis too ill to move, Noctis unprepared. _No, we can’t, can we_.

They had stood there in silence for a long time, until Clarus took Regis’ hand, stood by his side. In this: as in all else.

 _I won’t blame you if you go._ Regis had ever had a knack for lying about the things that really mattered. Clarus had long-since ceased to blame him for it. _I’m going to send Cor away, and the children. You should go too. Stay with them. They’ll need you._

 _They will have each other,_ Clarus had replied, wrapping his arm around Regis’ shoulders, pulling him close, their heads tucked together. _They will have each other, and lives ahead of them. I won’t leave you.)_

 

 

Regis cups his face. Searches it, as if he’s looking for something, some answer, and either cannot or will not find it. “Are you sure?” He asks. “There’s still time. You don’t have to die for me.”

It is the first time they’ve said the words outright.

The first. The last. The only.

It is as close, Clarus thinks, as either of them can come to saying  _goodbye._

Clarus places both his hands atop his King’s. Smiles.

“I swore an oath,” he replies, without malice. “And I will keep it, until the end of my days. One day longer is no greater a burden than fifty years.” The King’s eyes are wet, but the tears don’t fall.

“I cannot bear to take you with me,” he whispers, his voice shaking, ragged and raw. “To go on, into we know not what, when you have so much time left. When so many others need you.”

Clarus laughs, cups his cheeks in return, and kisses him.

“Oh, my love.” Clarus smiles, and does not cry either, though his eyes fain burn with tears and his heart is fit to burst with the agony of it. He commits this to memory, then—the sunlight casting long shadows with the curtains, slivers of it lighting Regis’ pale face up, the crow’s feet beside his eyes, the softening of his jawline. The flecks of white that are coming in at his temples, around his lower lip, the sunken look of his sleep-deprived eyes, the frantic energy he’s never lost, frenetic and compressed and so unlike his son. How much, how  _much_ , he loves this man. How much he has loved him since he was a babe in arms and Clarus was a child, unsure but  _loving him_ , how much he loves Regis now just as much as then. That he cannot bear to leave, for the agony of continuing without him alone, when he has come so far and so long, is unthinkable. Death is but a moment, a single moment. Life alone is torture, and Clarus has never been a man who has relished in self-harm.

“There is nothing I should like better in the world than to go on into death with you.”

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr and twitter @jonphaedrus


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